PostPartisan: April 4, 2010 - April 10, 2010

Did he or didn’t he? Headline writers seemed torn Friday over whether Bob Rubin actually apologized during his testimony to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this week. The Financial Times headline read, “Ex-Citi chiefs apologise for losses.” The Washington...

Justice John Paul Stevens has long been labeled, correctly, as the leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc, but I suspect that future historians will refine that distinction a little more carefully. Stevens’s chief contribution has been to lead...

Here is an unsettling thought for those who waited eight years for a Democratic president to make judicial appointments: Barack Obama could well end his first term with a more conservative Supreme Court than the one he inherited. This...

Covering the Supreme Court for six-plus years was one of the best jobs I have ever had, and one of the best things about it was the opportunity to observe Justice John Paul Stevens on the bench and to...

With President Obama in the White House, it's pretty safe to say that there's no danger that the leader of the Supreme Court's liberal wing -- Justice John Paul Stevens -- will be replaced with an ideological opposite. But...

[UPDATED AFTER THE JUMP] Justice John Paul Stevens’s retirement is an enormous loss for the country, and particularly for progressives who have valued his brave and straightforward defense of civil liberties, equal rights and equal justice over many years....

Speaking of redemption, like Tiger Woods, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) is everywhere! The New York Times Style section front page story on him today is all about his "long, winding and slightly bewildering road to redemption."...

The self-proclaimed interim leader of Kyrgyzstan -- an obscure Central Asian state with a very important U.S. military base -- raised some alarms in Washington when she took a congratulatory phone call from Vladimir Putin and thanked Russia for...

It's a maxim of criminal defense law that the cover-up is worse than the crime. Criminal defense lawyers warn their clients that they are likely to get in more trouble for what they do after the underlying offense --...

Maybe he was arrogant. Perhaps he was just stupid. But air marshals were right Wednesday to take a Qatari man into custody while traveling on a United Airlines flight from Reagan National to Denver. Details about the incident are...

A new CBS News poll out today continues to show that Americans view former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) about as favorably as a gift Toyota. Overall, just 24 percent of Americans view the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee...

Craig Shirley and Don Devine use Karl Rove’s new memoir to argue that George W. Bush was no conservative. I am admirer of both men (and particularly Shirley’s outstanding histories of Reagan’s presidential campaigns), but I respectfully disagree. (Full...

By Lee Hockstader Amid the gushing torrent of Michael Steele’s loopy remarks, bumbling mismanagement and unstinting bad judgment, an essential fact has been lost: His very appointment as head of the RNC was an act of supreme cynicism. Let’s remember...

That's it. I'm done. I'm tired of Tiger Woods' seemingly endless emotional striptease as he tries to prove that he really is contrite, chastened and humbled by the mess his libido caused. First came the apology before a live...

By Lee Hockstader So it turns out that slavery did cause the Civil War. So says Bob McDonnell, Republican governor of Virginia -- a student of the Better Late Than Never School of Political Damage Control. On Tuesday the governor...

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell's (R-Va.) sanitized celebration of Confederate History Month got me thinking about a sanitized version of a common question that I'd like to ask the Republican Party: what the frig?! By itself, McDonnell's seven-paragraph insult could...

This just in: Sheila Johnson, billionaire co-founder of Black Entertainment Television who endorsed Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R-Va.) just sent me the following statement on "Confederate History Month." “I must condemn Governor McDonnell’s Proclamation honoring ‘Confederate History Month,’ and...

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s proclamation declaring April Confederate History Month notes that in April 1861, “the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America.” I guess it depends on what you mean by “the people.” The 1860 Census...

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's decision to recognize April as Confederate History Month in the Commonwealth is within his rights as governor. He also is at liberty to word the proclamation any way he wants. But he cannot change the...

Today, Dana Milbank reports on a different kind of tax protest -- one by wealthy liberals who think their taxes are too low: “I'm in favor of higher taxes on people like me,” declared Eric Schoenberg, who is sitting...

"I know them both well, and I just want to say from the very beginning Bob McDonnell has had his pulse on the state of the economy that's facing Virginia right now. He understands that we need jobs, jobs,...

Everyone seems to be on a career death watch for Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Totally understandable since Ken McKay, his chief of staff, and Curt Anderson, a long-time adviser, hit the bricks last night. Michael...

In his op-ed yesterday, Timothy Shriver writes: The scandal facing Catholics today looks a lot like the Watergate scandal that engulfed the United States in the early 1970s. Then, what started as a crime committed by a few burglars...

The Post story on President Obama's meeting with black Christian leaders before the Easter prayer breakfast this morning had an enraging quote from political commentator Tavis Smiley. After hosting a forum on how Obama could help African Americans in...

What do President Obama and singer Ricky Martin have in common? Both men made announcements last week that fall into the category of "Yeah, and?" But each was notable in its own way. Martin came out of the closet...

Here's the Good, the Bad and the Ugly from Tiger Woods's news conference Monday: Good: He blamed no one but himself for his predicament. Yes, it would have been ridiculous for him to try to shift responsibility to anyone...

There isn’t even a vacancy on the Supreme Court and yet the absurdities have already begun. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the minority whip, essentially warned President Obama that sterling qualifications won’t be enough for...

Headlines this morning proclaimed all the nasty myths about the Tea Party that the media has peddled over the last several months to be “busted.” Four in ten Tea Partiers are Democrats or independents, according to a survey by...

"Do you feel that, as an African-American, you have a slimmer margin for error than another chairman would?" That was the blunt question emailed from Myron to ABC's George Stephanopolous for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. And the...

Homing in on a central theme of New Yorker editor David Remnick's new book on President Obama, "The Bridge," Frank Rich examines a well-worn truism in American politics today. Namely, that Obama is a Rorschach test. Whatever you think...